Report: Hamas ‘Fifth Column’ in Abbas’ Bodyguards

Hamas has infiltrated into the senior ranks of Abba’s personal guards, riddled with Hamas agents and bearing out Israel’s worst fears.

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

First Publish: 8/22/2012, 1:55 PM

PA Security Forces

Israel News photo: Flash 90

Hamas has infiltrated into the senior ranks of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abba’s own security forces, bearing out Israel’s worst fears that the PA might turns it guns on Israelis, according to the DebkaFile website.

Debka, staffed by former journalists and former intelligence personnel, said that the Palestinian Authority arrested this past Sunday two Hamas agents of the terrorist’ organization’s military branch who infiltrated into the elite hand-picked security force that guards Abbas.

The PA reportedly has clamped a blackout on the arrests.

Abbas' personal security force includes approximately 170 men, and the general security forces include an additional 4,000. The discovery of the two Hamas infiltrators indicates the possibility that the PA security army, officially called police under the Oslo Accords, may be filled with more Hamas operatives.

Debka said there might be the existence of an “unknown number of sleeper cells awaiting orders to spring into action” against Abbas as well as IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria.

Israeli nationalists have warned for years that the government’s allowing the PA to deploy a security force far larger than the number limited by the Oslo Accords, and allowing them to be armed, will bring about a repeat of the terror that broke out in the late 1990s after the Rabin government gave the PA thousands of rifles.

The presence of Hamas terrorists in the PA security forces is especially troubling for the United States and Britain, which screened Abbas’ personal guards.